Kenya Faces Somalia Quagmire After U.S., Ethiopian Failures

A bomb exploded outside a complex of ministry buildings in Mogadishu after Al-Shabaab vowed to resist the Kenyan forces. Photographer: Abdiwahab Haji/AFP/Getty Images

Oct. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Kenya’s military drive into
neighboring Somalia to thwart attacks by the Islamist militant
group al-Shabaab risks ending like previous interventions by the
U.S. and Ethiopia -- in retreat and failure.

While Kenya’s well-equipped army has been able to advance
into southern Somalia, it may not be able to withstand attacks
by a determined guerrilla force, according to Thomas Cargill,
assistant head of the Africa Program at the London-based
international-affairs institute Chatham House, who called it
Kenya’s first foreign intervention.

“The problem comes with a counter-insurgency, that once
you are there and become a target, do you have the skills to
counter the increasing attacks against you?” he said by phone
yesterday. “On that score, I think the Kenyan military is
fairly untried.”

Kenyan soldiers entered Somalia on Oct. 16 after the
kidnapping of foreign tourists and aid workers in Kenya that
officials blame on al-Shabaab, which has pledged allegiance to
al-Qaeda. They may aim for the port of Kismayo, Emmanuel
Chirchir, a defense department spokesman, said yesterday. It is
a key target because control of the port gives al-Shabaab
revenue.

Marie Dedieu, a 66-year-old disabled French woman who was
kidnapped from a house near the northern Kenyan town of Lamu by
Somali gunmen on Oct. 1, has probably died, the French Foreign
Ministry said today in a statement.

Contacts with whom France was negotiating for Dedieu’s
freedom “have announced her death without informing us of the
precise date or the circumstances,” it said.

International Support

Kenya was joined by Somalia today in calling for
international support for its operation, the Kenyan presidency
said in an e-mailed statement.

The Kenyans and forces allied to Somalia’s western-backed
transitional government secured the towns of Tabda and Afmadow,
which is which is about 120 kilometers (75 miles) east of the
Kenyan border, Chirchir said. They have killed 75 al-Shabaab
militants since the operation began, the Nairobi-based Standard
newspaper reported today, without citing anyone.

“My understanding is that they have, at most, 2,000 troops
they are trying to drive through to Kismayo,” Bronwyn Bruton,
deputy director at the Ansari Africa Center of the Washington-based Atlantic Council, said in a phone interview yesterday. “I
don’t think it’s feasible that they can get very far into
Somalia, because 2,000 troops just aren’t enough.”

‘Black Hawk Down’

Somalia, on Kenya’s northeastern border, hasn’t had a
functioning government since the 1991 overthrow of dictator
Mohamed Siad Barre. Al-Shabaab has waged a four-year campaign to
remove the transitional administration and controls most of
southern and central Somalia.

Kenya’s military would be well-advised to conduct the
operation swiftly and hand over any territory its forces gain to
militias loyal to Somalia’s government, Bruton said.

“Foreign incursions aren’t welcomed by the Somalis,” she
said.

The U.S. concluded a two-year mission in the country,
“Operation Restore Hope,” which involved as many as 33,000
U.S. and United Nations soldiers, after the downing of two
American helicopters in Mogadishu in October 1994, an incident
made famous by Mark Bowden’s book “Black Hawk Down.”

Forces from neighboring Ethiopia withdrew in January 2009
after a two-year campaign that ousted the Islamic Courts Union
government and later became bogged down in a guerrilla war with
the Islamic militias.

Economic Impact

“If you look at Afghanistan and Iraq, you see these types
of operations fall into traps and weaken them further and
further, so then they need to make a withdrawal,” Cargill said.
“I would very much hope that for Kenya it would be intended to
be an in-and-out operation, and not stick around in southern
Somalia.”

Kenya acted after kidnappings of aid workers and attacks on
tourists. East Africa’s biggest economy is counting on a
tripling of tourists to 3 million a year by 2015 to help achieve
a goal of 10 percent growth. Dry weather has hurt economic
output in the country, the world’s largest producer of black tea
and a grower of high-quality coffee beans. Gross domestic
product fell 4.6 percent in the second quarter from the first
three months of the year.

Kenya’s intervention will be “expensive” and funding for
it will be a “challenge,” Finance Ministry Permanent Secretary
Joseph Kinyua told reporters today in Nairobi.

The possible loss of tourism earnings and slower
manufacturing output due to shipments being hijacked by Somali
pirates would cost the economy more if the Kenyan government
took no action, Kinyua said. The cost of the intervention into
Somalia hasn’t been calculated, he said.

Costs of Intervention

“If we do nothing to attend to the security issue, and
also sensitize our main markets in terms of the security
situation, then obviously the tourism is likely to go down,” he
said.

Gunmen from Somalia on Oct. 13 abducted two foreign aid
workers from the medical group Medecins Sans Frontieres at a
refugee camp in northeastern Kenya. Somalis fleeing famine and
war have poured across the border this year and Kenya now hosts
590,000 UN-registered Somali refugees, three-quarters of whom
live in the Dadaab complex, the world’s largest refugee
facility.

British tourist David Tebbutt was killed and his wife,
Judith, was abducted last month at a resort in Kiwayu, 503
kilometers southeast of Nairobi, and is being held hostage in
Somalia.

Threat to Tourism

The Lamu archipelago, where the incidents took place, is
one of Kenya’s main attractions for tourists who generated 73.7
billion shillings ($737 million) for the country last year, the
second-largest foreign-exchange earner after tea. The U.K.
government changed its travel advice on Oct. 1 to recommend that
visitors to Kenya avoid non-essential visits within 150
kilometers of the border with Somalia.

The tourism industry was expanding before the attacks.
Overseas arrivals jumped almost 14 percent to 549,083 in the
first half of this year, while earnings surged 32 percent to
40.5 billion shillings, Tourism Minister Najib Balala said on
Aug. 25.

Kenyan Defense Minister Yusuf Haji and Foreign Affairs
Minister Moses Wetangula flew to Mogadishu, the Somali capital,
yesterday for talks with President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed’s
government and pledged to press ahead with the military
operation.

A bomb exploded outside a complex of ministry buildings in
Mogadishu after al-Shabaab vowed to resist the Kenyan forces.

Al-Shabaab Revenge

“They attack us by air and on the border; we must unite
and fight back until we clear our territory,” a leader of the
Islamist movement, Sheikh Hassan Abdulahi Hersi, said yesterday
in a voice recording on Radio al-Furqaan, a station that backs
al-Shabaab. “The Kenyan government will lose many people and
assets because of its intervention in our territory.”

For Kenyans, pride that the government is taking action
against the Somali gunmen is tempered by precedent, says Ndungu
Wainaina, executive director of the Nairobi-based International
Centre for Policy and Conflict.

“Kenyans like that they can see the government doing
something after these kidnappings, but also they have an element
of reservation arising from the fact any foreign intervention in
Somalia has ended up in catastrophic results,” he said
yesterday by phone. “With a significant population of Somalis
in Kenya, they worry that the likelihood of attack is high.”

African Union Force

About 9,000 Ugandan and Burundian soldiers form the African
Union-led peacekeeping force in Somalia. Al-Shabaab claimed
responsibility for twin bomb attacks in July last year that
claimed the lives of at least 76 people in Kampala, Uganda’s
capital.

“I don’t know of any foreign intervention in Somalia that
has had a happy outcome,” Cargill said. “It would be nice if
Kenya’s intervention is able to impose some kind of security in
southern Somalia but the precedents are not good.”